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Some veteran journalists, particularly those who remember the adversarial days of Vietnam, lament the meekness with which the press seems to have acceded to the Pentagon's control of the war story. The public, however, does not appear to have much sympathy for that view -- at least not yet. "In a war, people are apt to feel that the press is being too pushy and that it ought to be less intrusive, more 'on the team,' " says Marvin Kalb, a former CBS and NBC diplomatic correspondent who heads the Barone Center at Harvard. "I think that's a perfectly natural human reaction." But if the war starts to take a troubling turn, another natural reaction may set in: a demand to know why more was not revealed sooner.
CHART: NOT AVAILABLE
CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 1,000 American adults taken for TIME/CNN on Jan. 24 by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman. Sampling error is plus or minus 3%. "Not sures" omitted.
CAPTION: The U.S. military is censoring reports coming out of the Middle East. Do you think it is wrong, or do you think censorship is necessary under the circumstances?
Despite this censorship, do you think you are getting enough information about the war?